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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoMark Lennihan | Associated PressOne World Trade Center rises above the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, where the names of victims will be read today.

NEW YORK — When this year’s Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony unfolds at ground zero, the mayor who
has helped orchestrate the observances from their start will be watching for his last time in
office. And saying nothing.

Over his years as mayor and chairman of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, Michael
Bloomberg has sometimes tangled with victims’ relatives, religious leaders and other elected
officials over an event steeped in symbolism and emotion.

But his administration largely has succeeded at its goal of keeping the commemoration centered
on the attacks’ victims and their families and relatively free of political image-making.

In that spirit, no politicians — including the mayor — were allowed to speak last year or will
be this year.

Memorial organizers expect to take primary responsibility for the ceremony next year and say
they plan to continue concentrating the event on victims’ loved ones, even as the forthcoming
museum creates a new, broader framework for remembering 9/11.

“As things evolve in the future, the focus on the remembrance is going to stay sacrosanct,”
memorial President Joe Daniels says.

At today’s ceremony on the 2-year-old memorial plaza, relatives again will read the names of the
nearly 3,000 people who died when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pa. Readers also will recite the 1993 trade-center bombing victims’
names.

At the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, where today’s ceremony will include
bell-ringing and wreath-laying, officials gathered yesterday to mark the start of construction on a
visitor center.

The Pentagon plans a ceremony this morning for victims’ relatives and survivors of the attack,
with wreath-laying and remarks from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other officials. There also
will be an afternoon observance for Pentagon workers.

Deciding how to mark the anniversary of the worst terror strike in U.S. history was a sensitive
task for Bloomberg and other leaders in the months after the attack, perhaps especially for the
then-new mayor. Officials were planning a memorial service for thousands of families from 90
countries, while also setting a tone for how the public would commemorate 9/11.

“That was the challenge that we faced, and it was an enormous one,” recalls Jonathan Greenspun,
who then was part of Bloomberg’s community-affairs unit and now is a political consultant. “There
was a recognition, by the mayor, that the ceremony had to transcend typical memorial services and
the politics that are sometimes associated with them.”

Officials fielded about 4,500 suggestions — including a Broadway parade honoring rescue workers
and a one-minute blackout of all Manhattan — before crafting a plan centered on reading names at
ground zero.

“Our intent is to have a day of observances that are simple and powerful,” Bloomberg said as he
and then-Gov. George Pataki announced the plans in 2002.

Bloomberg’s role hasn’t always been comfortable, especially for a mayor whose brisk, pragmatic
personality and early criticisms of the memorial struck some victims’ relatives as insensitive.

When Bloomberg mentioned the idea of ending the name-reading after 2011, some of the relatives
were aghast.

By next year’s anniversary, Bloomberg will be out of office, and the museum is expected to be
open beneath the memorial plaza.

While the memorial honors those killed, the museum is intended to present a broader picture of
9/11, including the experiences of survivors and first responders.

But the organizers expect they “will always keep the focus on the families on the anniversary,”
Daniels said. “We see ourselves as carrying on a legacy.”